


Flashes

by RednReady



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-11 04:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13517019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RednReady/pseuds/RednReady
Summary: drips and drabs from moments/episodes whenever they strike me





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A tidbit from 3x18. From Red's perspective.

"No. Get out. Please, go away. Make him go away."

He can’t breathe. Relief and joy, instantly replaced by a stone wall of fear and rejection. She looks at him as if he would, in some universe, _harm_ her child…

He didn’t think it was possible. He thought there was nothing she could ever do or say that would cut him that deep. Hatred for killing Sam, he understood. Anger over closely guarded secrets about her very self, he sympathized with. But this was unexpected. Couldn’t be guarded against. A mountaintop moment so quickly dragged low.

He scrambles to brush it off, to cover up the hurt look that he knows must be on his face.

Kate rescues him from it. He tries not to listen to the family unit bonding behind him. He’s not welcome; shouldn’t intrude.

As he slowly steps away, he reminds himself - he doesn’t deserve it. He is a criminal whose many sins have brought them to this place. He deserves nothing, not even a look at that precious infant’s face. The child is _her_ daughter, and she doesn’t have to grant him an audience if she doesn’t want to.

He needs air.

He tells Dembe he’s stepping out and then stops at the remembrance of his earlier loss of temper. He had wounded his friend, much like Elizabeth had just wounded him. He blamed unjustly. He should make it right.

“I’m sorry, Dembe.”

“I know, Raymond.”

Of course he knows. He might be the only person in the world who knows just how much of his heart is lying over in that plastic room.


	2. Heavy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always felt like they should have pushed Red and Dembe further apart, made Red colder, if they really wanted to sell the idea that Dembe would poison him. So this is a bit of a re-imagining of the scene at the end of the Harem, after Liz confronts Red about Kaplan.

Dembe had told her.

When his own words failed to get produce sufficient outward remorse in his employer, he’d turned to punishing him through Elizabeth’s condemnation. He couldn’t get to him, but she could. She always could.

He’d placed the knife in her hand. The knife that now protruded from Reddington's heart. He made no move to stop the bleeding. 

Instead he just watched, shoulders tense, as Elizabeth walked back to her car. “Was that to your satisfaction?”

Dembe moved toward him. “Raymond, I told her because I felt it was important for her to know.”

Red scoffed. A joyless sound. Dembe stood there, acting as if he wasn’t fully aware of what he had just done. Acting as if he’d had both of their best interests at heart. Reddington closed down.

“Fuck off, Dembe.” It was a weary curse. A shuttered curse. An inability to look at the man, because if he did, he’d collapse. Unable to take one more stone heaped upon the burden of guilt that robbed the joy from his steps. The guilt he lately felt in every one of his bones. Bones that were tired of straining. Tired of bearing.

Just tired.

Red heard the younger man walk away. Good. It’s what he wanted. He wanted to be alone.

Red’s gaze remained fixed on the window, at the place where Elizabeth had been before disappearing into the crowd.


	3. Mourning

Her husband is dead. And yet he lives. 

Reddington’s concerned about her. Keeps hinting that she needs to move on. As if moving on is easy. As if her life doesn’t still lie in pieces on the floor of the home she thought she’d made, with a man she thought she knew.

‘Your husband never existed.’

But he had. To her. 

He’d existed in that cafe, adorable and charming.

He’d existed in the restaurant she snuck off to when Nik was busy, eating chow mein in secret against her better judgment. 

He’d existed when she turned down Nik’s proposal, her heart already turning toward another. 

He’d existed when he proposed himself not two weeks later. 

He’d existed during their whirlwind engagement, things moving so fast she could hardly keep up, excitement beating wildly in her chest. 

He’d existed after a day of flipping through files full of unspeakable horrors, ready with dinner and wine and simple tales of fourth graders gone wild to make her think that the world was not so dark after all.

He’d existed when she studied and worked to become an FBI agent, supporting her all the way, bolstering her confidence. 

He’d existed in those late night talks about their future, of two or three adopted children filling their home with laughter. Children abandoned, as she had been. Given a second chance, as she had been given. 

And then he was gone. Empty lies filling the place where her husband of two years had been.

Nobody understands what it’s like to mourn someone who never existed.

Her husband is dead. 

She’s wrapped the man who wears his face in chains.


	4. Fantasy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> no idea how it's going to break down, but this is an imagined scene in the reddington house after masha is taken

"So what now? We say we adopted her and live our lives as a happy little family? You, me, and our two daughters?"

"Something like that, yes."

"You're living in a fantasy world if you think that's going to happen."

"Look, I don't know what to do! Okay? What should I have done, leave my daughter to be raised by a-a Russian spy? I would never see her again!" He paced back and forth, agitated.

"I should turn her in. That's what I _should_ do. I'm practically a traitor myself for not, but I can't face Lizzy one day and be like, 'sorry, sweetheart, daddy had to execute mommy, he had no choice!'"

He sat down and dropped his head in his hands. "That's part of the genius of the whole thing. I wonder if that was part of her calculation."

"None of this would have happened if you hadn't slept with her."

"I know that." He looked up. "You think I don't know that? You think I don't regret it now?"

"Only because you found out what she was." Carla was beyond arguing. Why she continued to think there was some hope for their marriage was beyond her. And yet she stayed. "Before that you wanted to run off with her." He didn't reply. "I know you did. I saw it."

"What do you want me to say? That we never should have gotten married? Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing was one giant mistake. But none of that matters right now. What matters is I've got two powerful entities breathing down my neck thanks to her, and I have no idea how I'm going to keep you all safe."

"Three."

"Three what?"

"Three powerful entities." Carla got up and walked to the window.

"She'll come for her daughter. I know I would." She pulled back the curtain and looked out. "You can't stay here."


End file.
